Health and Healthcare Systems

Leaders at Davos: We’ve been ignoring women’s health for too long

A lack of data related to women's health issues has translated into a gender health gap.

A lack of data related to women's health issues has translated into a gender health gap. Image: World Economic Forum/Ciaran McCrickard

Stéphanie Thomson
Writer, Forum Stories
This article is part of: World Economic Forum Annual Meeting
  • A lack of data related to women’s health issues has translated into a gender health gap.
  • In 2020, nearly 800 women died every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
  • Closing this data gap could create enormous commercial opportunities and save women’s lives.

There’s an expression often used by more quantitative-focused academics: if you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist. In other words, we can’t even begin to conceive of an issue without adequate data.

For a long time, that was the case for women’s health – as Anita Zaidi, President of Gender Equality at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, noted in a session at Davos. “One of the first things I noticed when I took on this role was the lack of data – the lack of general data that informs why we should be caring about women’s health.”

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This data gap translates into a gender health gap. A new report from the World Economic Forum, published in collaboration with the McKinsey Health Institute, highlights the fact that women live 25% more of their lives in poor health compared to men. And as noted in the same Davos session by Muhammad Ali Pate, Nigeria’s Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, that means women all over the world are dying from often-preventable conditions. For example, during every day in 2020 nearly 800 women died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth; “it is very clear that this has been an unattended area in global health overall,” he said.

In spite of such shocking statistics, there is room for optimism. “We have much more data than we had even two or three years ago,” acknowledged Zaidi; she referenced a newly launched, publicly available tool from the World Economic Forum, the Women’s Health Impact Tracking platform, designed to monitor and bridge the health gaps faced by millions of women worldwide.

The commercial opportunities created by focusing on long-neglected women’s health issues could be enormous, several of the panellists pointed out. “For every dollar you invest in women’s health, there’s a three-dollar return,” Zaidi flagged. And as UNICEF’s executive director Catherine Russell highlighted, the benefits are felt by more than the individuals themselves. “If women are healthy and can participate in their society, then the society is going to be prosperous,” she said.

For every dollar you invest in women’s health, there’s a three dollar return.

Anita Zaidi, President of Gender Equality at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Of course, we must not forget that even if the economic case is strong, this ultimately comes down to something more important: people’s lives. “There’s a commercial opportunity but there is also a huge potential for saving lives and impacting lives,” Zaidi noted. After all, what use is innovation if the people who need it most cannot access it, questioned Pate. “The innovations that have been developed…we have to ensure women actually get them,” he stressed. “Many women do not access services because they simply cannot afford them.”

That’s a message the private sector has heard loud and clear, according to Bernd Montag, chief executive officer of Siemens Healthineers and another panellist in the session. “We need to make a mindset shift to measuring success as the number of lives we touch,” he said.

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